-Down to Earth Such a programme is the need of the hour not only as a measure to revive the urban economy now, but also to mitigate any further shocks to it in the future The collective memory of how India lived through the world’s largest lockdown will be seared by images of how our state and society dealt with the country’s Workers. Left largely to fend for themselves, millions living in...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-PTI Nearly 1,500 families are heading to their home towns every day Left with no source of income, Workers in Surat’s diamond industry are leaving the city in large numbers. After being forced to down shutters in March-end owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, business resumed in the second week of June. However, over 600 Workers and their families have tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the Surat Municipal Corporation to order the closure of...

-Newsclick.in/ PTI The Labour Ministry has already put the draft rules issued on July 7 in the official gazette. The code subsumes 4 labour laws and is being opposed by trade unions. New Delhi: The Code on Wages, 2019, the first law under ‘labour reforms’, is likely to be implemented by September as the Ministry of Labour and Employment has put draft rules of the law in public domain for feedback, a...

-Down to Earth Several Saurashtra migrants who had returned to work in Surat in May-end said they have fallen back on land resources for agriculture The Saurashtra region in western Gujarat has been witnessing a second wave of reverse migration amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Labourers employed in the diamond industry in Surat had first migrated back to their villages in Saurashtra when the Union government had first announced nationwide lockdown...